My Cuba – Volunteer Work

By Ron Ridenour, March 1996

“To build commuism, you must build new man, as well as the economic base...the instrument for mobilizing the masses...must be moral in character...Work must cease being what it still is today, a compulsory social obligation, and be transformed into a social duty...Our goal is that the individual feels the need to perform voluntary labor out of internal motivation, as well as because of the special atmosphere that exists.” (Excerpted from speeches Che gave to workers as the Minister of Industry, taken from “Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution”, seven volumns published in Havana by Editorial Ministerio de Azúcar)

At the crack of dawn one humid July morning, I mounted my trusty iron horse and pedaled off to La Julia in Batabano municipality, 40 kilometers south of my Havana residence. I was on my way to participate in what Che called that “special atmosphere” of collective volunteer labor. The “special period”, recently enacted following the fall of Comecon, Cuba´s main trading partners, had designated plan alimentario (food plan) as priority number one, along with increased tourism. The state now emphasized becoming self-sufficient in many areas, especially in the production of locally grown produce.

Two hours later, a sign marking GIA-2 appeared on the flat horizon saturated with banana plants and vegetable crops. The camp looked like the others I had just passed: white-painted, one-story concrete dormitory buildings neatly arranged in rows. Shrubs, flowers and garden vegetables grew between the buildings. In the distance, I could just make out the sea where I had sailed past Batabano on petroleum runs.

GIA-2´s director, Oscar Geerken, a handsome man in his mid-40s, led me to his cubicle where I´d be staying. It had four, two-tiered bunk beds with thin foam rubber mattresses and pillows. Two ventilators whirled overhead to cool the room and chase away persistent mosquitos—Cuba´s only dangerous animal, Fidel was fond of saying.

“We built this camp ourselves with help from local constructors,” proudly proclaimed the mustachioed Oscar, “and we did it in just 29 days.”
Geerken was a chemistry teacher and school administrator, who had come here with the original 120 founders, in November 1990. He, like the others, would get his job back following his two volunteer years, or even before if he quit earlier. When I arrived, in 1992, there were 220 workers at Colonel Mambi Juan Delgado Contingent. Commonly called GIA-2, it received its offical name after an officer who had rescued the cadaver of hero Antonio Maceo killed in battle, in 1896.

The cubicles are divided by gender. In the front of cubicles housing 50 women is a space used for the polyclinic attended by a permanent nurse or doctor. Most of the ailments are minor: machete cuts, colds, asthma and hypertension. A new sugar cane-based pharmaceutical pill, called PPG, is administered to regulate cholesterol for those with hypertension. Its “magical” properties include the purported side-effect of stimulating sexual drives, for which there is scant call for in Cuba.

A recreation building across the courtyard is divided into two large rooms. One has two television sets at opposite ends so that viewers can choose between the nation´s two channels. The other room affords space for a ping-pong table and card tables for dominos, checkers and chess. These tables are cleared away for Saturday night dances. The recreation hall is brightly dotted with art works painted by volunteer worker-artists.

Another building, quite long and divided by gender, contains toilets, wash basins and showers. Although the toilets are flushable, and even though there is a permanent cleaning staff, a putrid odor constantly lingers. Corrugated laundry sinks are attached to the bathroom facilities. It is almost always the women who do the washing for male lovers or friends. Because they do the washing women go to the front of the chow line. The only complaint one hears about gender arrangements is that contingent policy makes it difficult to copulate because the sexes cannot be together in cubicles.

“We can´t afford to have domestic relations spill over into collective quarrels, or cause people to get up late for work. Some would object on moral grounds as well. But people find ways to link up,” Geerken smilingly explained from first-hand experience.

We entered the brightly decorated cafeteria and were handed metal trays heaped with moros y cristianos (beans and rice, named after dark-skinned Moors and white Christians), steaming bean soup, hot dogs, a sweet made from freshly picked egg plant, and soda. The menu on the wall announced cod fish for dinner. Cod is caught by Cuban fishermen in far away colder waters. Breakfast is usually the same: hot milk and coffee with a piece of hard bread. Breakfast and dinner are free of charge; lunch costs .50 centavos.

After a two-hour lunch break, Geerken introduced me to the head of finca 13, the 73-hectare banana plantation. Oscar Rodríguez is a history and philosophy professor. The brigade assigned to initiate the banana plantation elected him their chief because he was the only man here raised on a farm who also had some knowledge of growing bananas.

Working in the plantation during several visits over a four-year period, I learned some of the mysteries of growing this beautiful, tasty and utilitarian fruit. It is also one of the few fruits to which the stomach takes easily when in uproar. The plant itself can be used for many things: food for work animals, protection from sunshine, for roasting meat; and its fibers are used for textiles.

Entering the mature plantation in the early morning dew is a venerate experience. The shadowy silence and fresh moisture embraces and comforts. Under the tall fruit banana and shorter burro banana trees, the sun does not penetrate to human height and fronds protect one from rain. All is green and tranquil.

My adrenalin churns as I scout for the marked bananas. A technician has designated which ones are ready to cut. Some trees have fallen from the force of the last cyclone. A combination of heavy winds and the nematodos virus had wiped out a section of the plantation. A few cords were snapped and some overhead wires were broken but GIA-2 got off lucky this time. Cutting banana bunches is heavy but fun work. One holds the bunch with one arm and swings the short machete at the top of the trunk with the other. When the bunch falls onto one´s chest, one swings at the vine just above the bunch to cut off the tree top. The worker then carries the 30 to 40-kilo bunch to the “street” (a series of rows) where the oxen cart passes by. Another man will load them and cover the fruit with fronds to protect them from the hot sun. Sometimes the bunch is dumped gently into the cart by the cutter if the oxen are passing by.

Dripping sap stains clothes and the body. Yet the same plant produces a watery liquid that washes away body stains. At the day´s end, we dip our fingers in the liquid where trunk layers turn brown. These juices clean the sap stains.

The cyclone had left the earth muddy and the oxen yoke got stuck in a dip, and the cart couldn´t budge. The driver was working Contrario and Asabache. He couldn´t convince them to budge despite using the flimsy whip. He called for Nelson. When the tall young man arrived, he set his jaws tight and struck one beast´s ticklish ribs with his fist. Contrario (obstinate) stepped sidewise. Nelson wanted him to step forward. He slapped Contrario´s rear with the flat of his machete and threw dirt into the animal´s mouth—“To dry the foam and get rid of his agitation by giving him a new one,” Nelson explained. The beast plunged forward and with Asabache pulled the heavy cart out of the mud.

After we cut the marked bunches, our team was set to dig new holes for the chopos (pods of young plants). The rains had left the earth so muddy it was difficult to hoe. My clothes and body quickly caked with mud. It rained again and we slid and slipped. After a while the rain and mud didn´t matter but the biting insects did: mosquitos, ants and gegen, a gnat-like fly that bites likes horseflies. Once the green plant is cut, the chopos smell like fresh rubber and attract a tiny black ant whose bite stings for minutes.

I walked alongside a yoke, careful not to get too close to the oxens´ thick hooves, catching the pods from a female worker, who threw them from the slow-moving cart. I placed the chopos on the earth two meters apart. After seeding a dozen rows, we hoed and topped the pods with loose soil.
Working with women can either slow down production, due to inevitable flirtation and different gender capacities, or sometimes speed it up, because the men like to show off and women often sing stimulating songs. Love songs and swinging hips induce faster work motions as a distraction to rising passions.

The next day, I sat beside a tractor driver. I was shocked to watch a dozen mature banana trees get rudely eliminated by the monster as its steel assortments ruined bunches or felled plants because of his reckless driving. This experience made it clear to me that using oxen and hand-work with machetes is more respectful of nature´s gifts, although perhaps not as economically efficient since hand-work is much slower than machinery.

I got off this mechanical brute and cut dried trunk leaves with the short-bladed machete. Once the innersides are exposed, one can often find a tiny frog therein. It is a slimy but harmless, cute creature that incomprehensively frightens most Cuban women and some men.

Cuba still employs chemical sprays against plant diseases even under the special period limitations and with heightened ecological awareness. Sigatoka (sugar cane rust) spreads so rapidaly and is so lethal to crops that airplanes are used to spray nauseating, imported chemicals. Fumigating new sprouts of weeds growing close to plants is a constant, tedious task of brigadistas, who apply the Belgian-made Monsanto herbicide from a tank carried on their backs. The instructions call for extreme caution and use of goggles, though this is generally ignored.

The natural fungus, verticullium lecani, is used against the ruinous white fly, which attacks fronds, although many farmers still use the ancient method of mixing tobacco leaf leftovers with water as a harmless but time-consuming way of combating the white fly. Another fungus, trichoderma, is used effectively against injurious fungi in other crops. Even the lion ant is helpful against some plagues. It will be a long time, however, before biological methods will replace the need for the unfavorable chemicals to control farmers´ many menaces.

Finca 13 is comprised of 150,000 “silk” banana trees surrounded by two rows of the protective, sturdy burro plants, whose squatty banana is cooked green in a variety of dishes: boiled, mashed, roasted and fried. The “silk” banana is eaten raw, as are other types. The special period´s food plan stresses planting a few types of bananas least susceptible to plagues.
Once the banana plant matures, it sprouts a large purple bud popularly known as a “tit”. The tit weighs half-a-kilo and is half-a-meter long. They droop heavily from pendulous stalks. Tit bracts easily roll back to expose a glossy silk-like lining. Beneath each bract lay overlapping rows of cream-colored, unisex flowers from which emanates a perfume fragrance. First to appear on the tit´s corded spike are several rows of female flowers, whose ovaries develop into “hands” of bananas.

“We used to cultivate only one crop a year,” Rodríguez told me, “and our banana production was way under demand. There were so many plagues, so many resources and so much attention required that we never caught up with demand. With new technology and increased manpower we´ll soon have enough bananas to eat.

“Just imagine, if we´d been planting enough of our own food all along we wouldn´t have such significant economic problems now that the Comecon is gone. We made a grave error relying on foreign friends to feed us, but we´re correcting that now.”

The new technology being employed includes the Israel-developed microjet irrigation system. Israel uses this for growing citrus fruits in deserts, and Cuba is importing the system from France for use in banana plantations as well as citrus crops. The microjet is one of Fidel´s pet projects, along with PPG pill production for export. He predicted that within a few years of installing the effective watering system yields would quadruple and bunches would produce a score of hands weighing up to 70 kilos. After two years of microjet useage, yields had increased and bunches had grown in size and weight but the objective was still off mark, and the system is expensive.

Another day found me cultivating vegetables with Gildy, a dynamic 22-year old former factory worker. She had suddenly found herself out of work when the radio assembly plant where she worked reduced its labor force. She went to the municipal labor office and they suggested she try the farm contingent.

“This is secure work and I get double my previous pay. The food is better than you get in the city on rations, and all the essentials are provided. And I feel useful, so it still appeals to me after a year,” Gildy told me.

“Because of our natural amiability, we have no real social problems here, other than a bit of jealousy from time to time. But that happens wherever men and women live and work together.”

Near quitting time workers rushed excitedly from the field shouting, “Fidel is coming! Fidel! Vive Fidel!” Three black Mercedes limosines sped by. A blue mini-van filled with armed security men drove at either end. Fidel didn´t stop this time. He had visited GIA-2 not long ago.

Saturday and cabaret time. Women had decorated the recreation hall and prepared snacks of salad, toasted bread and fried burro bananas. Some men had gone off to find “draught” rum at the state liquor counter-store. As expected, the store was out of the national alcohol. Tonight was special, so the men scurried about to find black market rum at double the price. Contingent Colonel Mambi Juan Delgado´s own band, the “Microjets”, was performing for the first time. Muscular banana workers dressed up in spick and span white clothing beat out sensual rhythms on congos, drums, trumpets, vibes, organ and clave sticks as other brigadistas gyrated to salsa and humped to son (Cuban soul) music. The women were sexily decked out in revealing clothing and inexpensive but sparkling jewelry. Some of them could have been models or Tropicana dancers.

We listened to music and danced until past midnight. No matter the late hour or the amount of booze, everyone would be up at 05:50. Awakened by music blaring out from the camp radio, we would all fall out for the morning assembly (matutino), partaking in participatory democracy before our labor began.

“A contingent without a matutino is not a contingent,” wrote the Cuban journalist, Clemente, who once worked there when I did.

The leadership informs workers at these daily assemblies what agricultural developments are taking place. The previous day´s work is quickly evaluated, and the current day´s tasks are outlined. The floor is then opened for questions and comments. At the end of this interchange, lasting between 15 and 30 minutes, the destacados (distinguished workers), chosen by all workers, are announced. Bonuses or vacations are awarded ever few months to those most frequently chosen destacado.

At this matutino, Geerken explained that he´d been to the Ministry of Internal Commerce to see about sorely needed work clothing. Many workers had holes in their work shoes not to mention tattered shirts and pants. A few did not even have work shoes. Socks were a rarity.

“We know that most textile factories are shut down and the ministry has few reserves. They told me they´d soon be distributing some shoes but they couldn´t say when.” A cloudy look fell over most faces yet no one spoke. They knew this was the truth and there was nothing that could be said. But Big Roberto spoke up after the general production chief, José Agüero, said that Brigade 8 was behind in planting potatoes and would have to speed up. “Give us more hands,” Big Roberto retorted. “Finca 13 is overstaffed and we are undermanned.” No one contradicted this assessment so Agüero shifted part of the banana personnel over to potatoes for a while. Someone held up a tooth brush and towel. “Did anyone leave these in the bathroom?” A man raised his hand and gladly took the hard-to-replace items. It was time to go to work.
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Crime increases wherever food scarcity exists; Cuba is no different. With the generalized scracity of goods, the special period cutbacks and shaky morality, crime soared so alarmingly that the Communist party took the issue up publically. Stealing had become so common, especially food meant for common distribution, that stealing was not considered as such but simply seen as “resolving a problem”.

It had become customary for passerbyers to take what they could from the fields, and many farm workers did likewise. In the first year of the special period, the vice-minister of agriculture reported that an estimated two million chickens had been robbed from aviaries, double the number the previous year.

Guards were now posted in farm areas. In the beginning only two guards patrolled at night at GIA-2. After crops began to disappear and the first ox was slaughtered and carted away, the number of guards increased to 16. They took turns patrolling around the clock. Production was affected with this loss of 16 workers. At first, guards carried loaded rifles or shotguns but after the first thief was shot by a working guard authorities took the bullets away. The shooting death occurred in another province and the local people believed is was unnecessary punishment. The fact that local and national authorities listened and responded in kind was an encouraging sign of democracy and humanistic tolerance about punishment.

Armed or not, guards could not keep banana bunches from disappearing from our plantation. Every once in a while, clothing and precious soap were taken too. The worst theft was that of a brand new Chinese bicycle. Pedro had left his bicycle in his cubicle without locking it. When he returned from working the tomato field it was missing. Geerken suspected someone and confronted the person. At first denying responsibility, the suspect admitted his deed after Geerken threatened to summon the police to check his family´s house where, in fact, he had stashed the bicycle. Our disciplinary committee voted unanimously for his expulsion. A report of his deed that would follow him to his next place of employment. The committee voted not to recommend a trial, which could have resulted in a jail sentence.

Personnel turnover was another destabilizing problem. Of the original 120 founders, nearly 100 stuck out their two year commitment. But those who came after the initial period were not so consequential. About one thousand volunteers had come and gone in the second two-year period. Nevertheless, GIA-2 general performance and production levels were among the very best of these volunteer collectives. Agüero tried to make sense of this apparent contradiction.

“The majority leave simply because the work is too hard and the sun too hot. A few leave because they would prefer another task than the one they were assigned. Some leave because of illness or family troubles. Married couples split up because so much time away from one another places a drain on the relationship. My own marriage is on rocky terrain.”

“A few leave because they weren´t real volunteers,” Agüero continued. “Not many but some have been encouraged to come because they had no other work or this was a condition for parole from prison. About 100 have been booted out because of bad behavior: excessive drunkedness leading to anti-social behavior; slapping women about and similar acts of violence; a couple cases of thievery, and a few for having sexual relations in cubicles. Leadership here is strict but not rigid or formalistic. We are strict enough to get the job done and win a few `best´ awards.”

Batabano´s state vegetable and fruit farms are a microcosm of government-run collective farms the nation over. In an interview with the party-appointed municipal agricultural director, Aldolfo Montalvo, he told me frankly how farming had been developing.

“Before the special period and the food plan this agricultural zone was cultivated by 105 permanent farmworkers, supplemented as all others by school children, who are hardly proficient. Now, we´ve got more hands than we ever dreamed. The permanent force is 150 and they have received a wage hike. They are reenforced by about 2,000 volunteers who commit themselves for from 15 days to two years. These are mainly adults who come from cities. Sometimes we are sent soldiers as extra hands at peak times. Most soldiers assist in agricultural throughout the nation and the army has its own farms, which produce most of the soliders food.

“Like all other areas we have received more fertilizers, herbicides, farm equipment, and oxen in substitute for less petroleum.”

The area´s 200 caballerias yield has doubled to 20,000 tons in this new period.

“There is no doubt that we are spending more money than is cost efficient for the increased production. Nor do I forsee a break-even point in the near future. However, right now we are most concerned about feeding the entire city and province of Havana.”

The next biggest obstacle to accomplishing this task is the inefficient distribution system, which is still not in the hands of the producers and municipal governments. I attended the first national assembly meeting in Havana concerning the progress of plan alimentario, in which distribution was discussed. Candido Palmero, the chief of Contingente Blas Roca, one of the most distinguished contingents, delivered a report to the nation´s leaders. Palmero had recently been named head of all the new agricultural contingents. He told the deputies that the contingents could guarantee the production goals for next year but there was one major problem. The large calloused-handed man paused. He and Fidel looked at each other from across the large hall. The president gestured for Candido to continue.
“What I can´t guarantee is that you will eat all the harvested crops, because we don´t have our own trucks to distribute the goods.”

Palmero now spoke to a hushed assembly. “We recommend that farmworkers should have the responsibility, the authority and the means to do the entire job, from breaking ground to delivery.”

Fidel enthusiastically agreed and so did the deputies, who decided that each state farm would get its own transportation to delivery production. This would first be tried in Havana´s fifteen municipalities. The bureaucratic distribution system is a centralized one in which all harvests are transported to central markets, called Acopios, where they are unloaded. Smaller distribution trucks are then assigned to load the products again and distribute them to smaller neighborhood markets. This process is almost never carried out in a timely fashion. The double work of loading, unloading and transporting results in constant losses of edible foods.

Two years following the decision to change this, the entrenched bureaucracy had not radically changed the transportation system. During one of my volunteer periods at GIA-2, I encouraged reporter Clemente to ride on a distribution truck and describe his experience in an article. His newspaper printed portions of his article. What went unpublished was quite revealing. Clemente had written that some bananas were “sold illegally on route and at the market place. About 1,400 pounds of the 30 to 32,000 pounds of bananas loaded at the field never reached the targeted consumers. Some 50 warehouse workers remained sitting on their hands for a long time after we pulled up with the truck, delaying the unloading process.” Nor did his observation appear that there were about 2,000 pounds lost to “scale discrepancies”.

My own random investigation into wastes at my local market revealed 128 boxes of rotten mangoes (5,760 pounds) out of a total of 553 boxes delivered two days before. The store manager and accountant told me this was “normal”. They said they can reject overripe or bruised produce but they can´t physically check each box upon arrival. “Furthermore, who wins if the markets don´t accept produce they can´t sell?” asked the accountant rhetorically. “If the trucker has to return the produce it just goes to waste anyway.”
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“Guajiro” country music whines atonally like the hillbilly twang of the unneighborly northern neighbor. Radio Rebelde plays it full blast at 05:50 a.m. Though the singing is shrill and the guitar sounds squeaky, the message is aimed at stiring awake.

Edgardo slowly lifts an acrylic blanket from his face and swings his legs over the lower bunk bed. He lumbers out into the star-lit morning and over to his wife´s cubicle. Guillermina embraces him and hands over the empty beer cans for him to fill with their breakfast—a mixture of powdered milk and cereal—at the dining hall.

The middle-aged couple had left their grown children in Santiago de Cuba to seek new horizons. Edgardo had a maintenance job at a secondary school where Guillermina was a school cook. They had been here six months when I met them, in 1994.
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The Col. Mambi Juan Delgado Contingent had been recently converted into a new type state farm cooperative, a UBPC—Basic Unit of Co-operative Production—and renamed José A. Fernandez cooperative, after a local martyr. They still till 900 hectares of bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage and tomatoes, but they now plant 26 hectares in vegetables for co-operative consumption, hoping this will be one incentive to keep people here for good. The new state cooperatives no longer rely on volunteers and they have reorganized the previous collectives to approximate the agricultural production co-operatives (CPA), which traditionally have comprised twelve percent of farm land. The state collectives had comprised 80 percent of farm land; some of this land is being converted into UBPCs. The rest of the cultivated land, eight percent, is owned by 75,000 small private farmers—the National Association of Small Farmers/ANAP. Private farmers can own no more than 65 hectares. No land can be sold privately but can be passed down if the inheritors have lived on the land before the owner´s death.

The Politbureau presented this new UBPC formula at the end of 1993, in order “to motivate people...to produce more with fewer resources”. Since the special period began, the nation´s leadership had been criticizing the state organized collectives for underproducing. Both private and cooperative farmes, and the army itself, have been better farmers, and the quality and diversity of food grown has also been better.

The key features of the new UBPC decree-law 142 are:
--Co-operative members have full use of the land without owning it—unlike CPAs where co-operators are full owners.

--UBPC members are owners of production, like the CPAs, in that they are free to work and organize as they choose but must sell their produce to the state at agreed upon prices.

--Farm equipment, seed, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, petroleum, parts, irrigation and other supplies are provided by the state on credit.

--Labor is paid by profit-sharing. The state advances an average monthly wage and capital to get started. Credit is repaid from the sale of harvests.

--UBPCs must be cost-accountable, profitable enterprises.

--UBPC members elect their leadership, which is subject to recall. Worker leadership represents all workers before state managers and state investors.

These changes were introduced after state leaders studied CPAs relationships to their land and their style of work. They learned that not only are CPAs better producers, in quantity and quality, than state collectivists but that these workers are more pleased with their work and daily lives. They also earn more money than collectivists. State leaders did not say, however, why they had decided not to sell the land to UBPC users. This does not coincide with the conclusion that a major incentive for CPA co-operators is their ownership status. But the man-on-the-street knows that the party leadership hopes that with a more stimulating work life, and thus improvements in the food economy, Cubans will learn—or relearn—that private ownership of land is not necessary for a decent economic life.
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I find Edgardo ploughing with his assigned steel-tracked Russian tractor, which must be pull-started by one of the few vehicles here with a functioning battery. The red, open cab is roofed with empty Dutch Desire potato sacks. Cuba imports this brand and Canadian potatoes as seed.

We bounce over rough earth while flights of herons glide down behind Edgardo on the newly formed rows. The “farmers´ friends” line up like snow-white sentries surveying for mice, which they devour.

After a couple hours ploughing, we stop to replace a broken bolt. It takes another driver an hour to fetch one, all the while the motor is wasting gasoline, because Edgardo is worried he can´t get it started again if he shuts it off.

“I like the co-operative idea,” Edgardo says. “We feel more connected to the soil, to our product. We eat our own produce. But there are still problems of discipline, bureaucratic slowness and lack of sufficient resources.

“The revolution has been too generous and too paternalistic. We´ve got to learn to produce what we need to, what we should,” the Angola war veteran muses. “Too many people are here only for the material benefits, like soap and 15 packs of cigarettes a month”, compared to only four on the ration card.

Edgardo gazes off into the savana. One half-expects giraffes to appear through the semi-tropical grassland. The only animals here, however, are oxen. The flat land is dotted with avenues of stately royal palms swaying splendorously erect.

I walk over to my favorite banana jungle and talk with Noel Perez. Just 17 years old, Noel moved here from his parents´ comfortable home outside Havana six months ago. He tells me why.

“I decided to work in agriculture to help produce the nation´s food, and for my own independence. I also earn more here than at my last city job. I am saving to buy blue jeans. Then I can look smart and go out dancing,” Noel says, his eyes sparkling.

There is no longer guaranteed adequate clothing on the rations. It will take Noel all his earnings over four months to buy his imported “dream pants”, which he will probably buy on the black market. But Noel doesn´t care. He looks forward to impressing his friends and, perhaps, a girl.

Noel associates with other youths recently moved here. They stop work when they want and sometimes sneak a drink of moonshine rum amidst the plantation´s shadows.

Near where Noel is spreading chemical fertilizer are one hundred 12 to 15-year olds picking weeds and pulling up carrots, just like Noel did for one month each year of junior high school. The study and work program, initiated shortly after the Revolutionary victory, still aims to teach youth where their food comes from, and give them a sense of identity with workers. The kids also enjoy the freedom of being away from home and the social life at their rural school close to GIA-2.

I find Guillermina in another part of the banana plantation brushing dried leaves away from the microjet tubings with her machete blade. This zestful grandmother moves at a rapid pace, pausing sporadically to secure or replace a broken sprinkler tip and cut dried parts of the trunk leaves.

Guillermina and Edgardo were raised on farms and are glad to be back in the fields. She recounts her past during breaks, which she liberally takes.
“I was born in the east, alongside Cuba´s tallest mountain, Turquino. My father was a peasant, a strong man who fathered 22 or 23 children; 17 by my mother. He went to the mountains to fight with Fidel,” she says proudly. “The revolution gave me everything. Without Fidel I don´t know what would have happened. He unites us. I wish the United States would stop its blockade and conduct their own revolution like ours, and then we could all live fraternally,” she dreams aloud.

“My kids are grown now. One has a baby. So I decided to seek adventure, to start anew. We grandparents left our house to our children. This way we can help the nation get more food, and we can earn more money and get our own house here.”
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When the state devised the self-sufficiency Food Plan, it announced that it would build 44 complete communities in Havana province, providing 12,000 residences to the farmworkers, plus thousands more elsewhere in the countryside. The government knew that petroleum to run construction vehicles and machinery would be scarce but with typical Cuban optimism it embellished on real possibilities. The gap between desire and reality resulted in many volunteer workers unwilling returning to their city homes and jobs. Two years after the planned deadline not one community had been completed. Only 50 residences had been finished in this province, of the 12,000 announced, and 7,000 in other provinces.

A small, two-story building stands within sight of the dining hall, the first six flats out of the 400 promised at José A. Fernandez UBPC. A genuinely elected workers´ commission decided on the six “most distinguished workers” from 40 applicants for the flats. The commission´s proposal was voted on by the entire workers´ assembly.

Mileydis Casanova, a 28-year old mother and wife of another cooperativist, is the proud owner of one of the attractive, three-bedroom apartments. Her husband, 30 year-old Rolando Fajardo, was elected as one of the most distinguished. The terms for buying the house are extremely liberal. The two pay a combined ten percent of their wages for 12 years. As long as they stay on this farm the house is theirs. Once the last payment is made, the house is theirs regardless of where they work. The state also sells them furniture, a refrigerator and a small kerosene-burning, two-plate stove—all at cost and paid for on time plan. These are the normal terms for new housing going up in the farmlands. In a few special cases, there are no costs to the workers if they stay on and produce well. When there are house payments, they normally range from 10 to 20 years. The state takes no profit, only what the actual construction costs amounted to.

Edgardo and Guillermina hope to be among those homeowners soon, but founding members of the contingent have preference.
At noon, Edgardo and Guillermina eat a basic hot lunch together and chat with me.

“We are one culture with one identity,” Guillermina explains when questioned if race is an issue in Cuba. Her complexion matches her man´s cinnamon-colored face, which is topped with kinky black hair. “Black Cubans, or mulattos, do not identify much with blacks in other countries. We have come a long long way from the days of my parents. They told me how they were treated before the revolution. My mother was a maid for a rich family for a while; my father a chauffeur. They couldn´t do many of things or go to many of the places that whites could. Today, it would never occur to any of us that we couldn´t do this or that or live here or there because of differences in color. Racism simply doesn´t exist any longer, as least not in practice.”
While blacks are not discriminated against, Cuban women have not yet gained full equality despite constitutional guarantees. Guillermina recently experienced this dichotomy when a male co-worker suggested that she take over the important responsibility of running the water pump he had been charged with. She was pleased by his confidence but the UBPC leadership turned her down on the grounds that it wasn´t “women´s work”. The all-male executive was concerned that constantly working in water would harm “womens´ works”, especially during menstration. The camp doctor and nurse, both women in their twenties, considered that notion to be “an old wives´ tale”. However neither they or the women´s brigade leader demanded any changes because, they said, “No woman had insisted on her equal rights”.

That evening Guillermina changed from sweaty work clothes into a white, flowered dress and plastic decoration in her natty black hair. She was going out to dinner. “Out” was just 25 meters from her cubicle to the dinning hall. She sat with a dozen men, all chosen by their brigades as the distinguished workers for the past two-week period. Edgardo was not with his wife as he had been chosen before.

The distinguished workers ate at table-clothed tables. They had the general dinner of rice and beans, sweet potato and thin soup, plus chicken for the occasion. The expected rum and desert were absent, however, and food preparation lacked “a loving touch”, Guillermina lamented.

Guillermina and Edgardo spend much of their free time watching TV or playing checkers. He is also a good chess player, and she likes to smack a volleyball with men and a few other scrappy women. The couple´s sex life has suffered since arriving at the co-operative. The contingent rules against chatting in each other´s rooms had been relaxed but cohabitating at the camp was still forbidden on pain of expulsion.

“It´s uncomfortable without our normal sex life,” Edgardo says timidly, “but I won´t take my woman down on the ground or in one of those water pump concrete bases like many do. I feel it demeans the woman and the act of love-making.”

They prefer to wait for their three-day passes every second weekend. Then they travel to Old Havana where they can be alone in a relative´s apartment. They sometimes miss those weekends, however, because they often choose to work extra weekends for the pay and because transportation is so discouraging. Guillermina feels that, “Waiting too long is just too much. Sometimes I look at Edgardo and say, `How long can a woman wait´”?

Entwined in each others arms, Guillermina and Edgardo huddle under a blanket to fend off winter´s wind wheezing through unshuttered port-like window holes. Along with others, the couple watch the Sunday matinee movie on TV, “Memories of the Invisible Man”.